Critical Essay by A. N. Wilson

In the following excerpt from his biography of Belloc, Wilson offers a mixed assessment of Belloc's poetry

The first book which Belloc published was a small collection entitled Verses and Sonnets in 1896. 'I do not think that this book excited a ripple of attention at the time, and yet some of the poems in it have lived, and are now found in many anthologies, where as the verse which at this time was received with a clamour of applause is nearly all of it not only dead but buried and completely forgotten." That was Maurice Baring's judgment in 1922. Since that time, Belloc's reputation as a poet has declined to the point where his serious verse is only known or appreciated by a small band of enthusiasts. At...